Products such as hammers or chippers used to reduce sizes of materials are subject to continued wear. Replacing of the parts is expensive from the standpoint of buying new parts, but is even more expensive from the labor required to replace the parts. Some of the parts are extremely heavy and require lifting equipment to remove old parts and insert new parts. However, the greatest cost in replacing of wear parts is the down time of equipment.
The loss of productive time to the equipment may far exceed the cost of the wear parts and the cost of the labor and auxiliary equipment which is necessary to remove the old wear parts and to replace them with new wear parts.
Added cost of replacement wear parts exists in the shipping of the parts and the inventorying of the parts. High inventories are necessary to restrict the down time to minimal times.
Once parts are worn they are useless and have value only as scrap. The differential between the cost of new wear parts and the scrap value of old wear parts is extreme.
Examples of wear parts which need to be replaced are found in hammer mills, waste recyclers and chippers. Another example is found in teeth of digging equipment. Any advance which can increase the life of wear parts reduces enormous losses and cost of replacement parts, cost of the replacement process, and loss of productive use of the equipment during the replacement, in addition to inventorying and shipping costs.